Samsung has announced a new handset, could it be one of the best cheap phones?

Press renders showing the Samsung Galaxy A03s in black and blue shades
(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung might be known for expensive handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S21 range, but it also makes all sorts of other phones, including very cheap ones, and a new one of these has just been announced.

Dubbed the Samsung Galaxy A03s, this new phone costs just £139 (around $195 / AU$260 but with no confirmed US or Australian availability just yet). That certainly makes it cheap, but is it good?

Well, we won’t know that until we’ve put it through a review, but the Galaxy A03s has a 5,000mAh battery, which is promisingly large, though no better than many other cheap phones, such as the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC.

The other specs are less interesting but probably about what you’d expect for the money. There’s a 6.5-inch screen, a low-end MediaTek Helio P35 MT6765 chipset, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and a triple-lens camera, with a 13MP main one, a 2MP macro one and a 2MP depth sensor. There’s also a 5MP camera on the front.

If you like the sound of the Samsung Galaxy A03s, you’ll be able to grab it from September 24 in the UK, in a black or blue color.


Analysis: price is the main selling point here

While specs lists rarely tell the whole story, this one sounds fine for the money, but unexceptional. The Moto G9 Power for comparison packs in better specs in almost every area (including an even bigger 6,000mAh battery) for just slightly more money.

Most other phones on our best cheap phones list cost a little bit more than that, but many of them have even better specs.

So the main selling point here really seems to be the rock-bottom price, which for anyone on a seriously tight budget could be enough to recommend it, but going purely by specs you can get a lot more phone for just a little more money elsewhere.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.